Hating the “pig” but loving the pork

Congressional Quarterly reports that the House of Representative’s most outspoken critics of what they say is unnecessary military spending are nonetheless attempting to secure nearly half a billion dollars in the defense appropriations bill for programs in their districts that the Pentagon does not want. CQ explains:

Sixty-seven Democrats who voted in March for a Progressive Caucus amendment to the budget resolution (H Con Res 99) that would cut defense spending by 21 percent and shift the money to domestic priorities successfully lobbied the Appropriations Committee this summer to add their local projects to the defense-spending measure (HR 3222), which the House passed Aug. 5. They obtained $485 million worth of programs not sought by the military, including missile launchers, blimps and self-inflating sleep pads, according to data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan research group.

Among these hypocrites are Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Barney Frank, Jim McDermott, John Lewis, and Keith Ellison. Republican members too are grabbing slices of pork but, as CQ notes, “unlike so many of their Democratic colleagues, the GOP members did not do so while condemning the Pentagon budget as inflated.”
Or, as Keith Ashdown, chief investigator with Taxpayers for Common Sense, puts it